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Greek socialists elect woman for first time as new party leader

Xinhua, June 15, 2015 Adjust font size:

Greece's socialist PASOK, one of the parties which dominated Greek politics for four decades and dramatically shrank after the start of the five year Greek debt crisis, elected a woman for the first time as its new leader on Sunday.

Fofi Gennimata, a veteran party member, who has served as Deputy Interior Minister, Deputy Education Minister and Deputy Health Minister over the past five years, won the leadership race, according to the results announced in the early hours of Monday.

Outgoing President Evangelos Venizelos, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister in the conservative-led coalition, which ruled until this year's general elections, stepped down to "make way for fresh ideas."

In the 2009 elections, just before the outbreak of the debt crisis, PASOK under former Prime Minister George Papandreou won 44 percent of votes.

Following multiple waves of austerity measures introduced to address the crisis, the party lost popular support, made a government alliance with the conservatives and in the latest electoral battle in January garnered just 4.7 percent of votes.

Party members voted across Greece on Sunday for PASOK's fifth president in four decades. Gennimata, scion of a political dynasty, called on all party members to help breathe new life into the party and the fragmented center-Left as an alternative to the now ruling Radical Left SYRIZA.

She has said that she will seek broader alliances with other progressive parties, implying that she might cooperate with former PASOK chief and ex-Premier George Papandreou and officials who left PASOK to form the Movement of Democratic Socialists in January.

Analysts in Athens noted that her efforts to reconstruct the center- Left could include the moderate Democratic Left (DIMAR), which also elected a new party leader a week ago, 36-year old economist Thanasis Theocharopoulos, to succeed the party's founder Fotis Kouvelis.

DIMAR was part of the previous coalition government in the period from June 2012 to June 2013, but failed to exceed the threshold of three percent of votes to enter the parliament in January's elections. Endi